You can hear it in the lyrics of "If We Were Vampires," the hauntingly beautiful Grammy-winning love song from the band's 2017 Grammy-winning Americana album, "The Nashville Sound."

And you can see it if you watch the Tiny Desk Concert the band recorded last summer for NPR, when he stops the song "Molotov" after the first verse because he sang, "Another world but I still remember," when he meant to sing, "Another life but I still remember."

"Let's do that again because I said the wrong word," he tells the band.

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When his wife, fiddle player and backing vocalist Amanda Shires, interjects that she didn't do her best either, he adds, "It's important. I spent so much time on that word, and then I said the wrong one."

It's a funny moment, yet poignant, shedding light as it does on the level of precision Isbell brings to his craft.

A former member of the alt-country group Drive-By Truckers, Isbell left that band in 2007, a turn of events precipitated by his struggles with alcohol abuse, according to published reports.

He subsequently fell in love with Shires, who coaxed him into rehab, he told NPR in 2013, and his career has been arcing up ever since.

Critical praise has been heaped upon him, especially for his last three studio albums - "Southeastern," "Something More Than Free" and "The Nashville Sound" - and for his band's hard-rocking concerts.

Isbell was born to teen parents (check out his song "Children of Children") in the deep South. He was raised a short drive north of Muscle Shoals, Ala., home to FAME Studios, where Rick Hall started producing the soulful sounds of Etta James and Aretha Franklin and Wilson Pickett back in the racially charged 1960s, using an all-white rhythm section known as the Swampers.

Inspired by what they'd heard, the likes of the Rolling Stones and Rod Stewart would later make their way to FAME, opening the floodgates. It's the place Isbell got his first job in music, at age 21, as a songwriter, which undoubtedly helped shape his perceptions, as expressed in "White Man's World," from the new album, which fades with the refrain, "I'm a white man living in a white man's nation/I think the man upstairs must've took a vacation/I still have faith but I don't know why/Maybe it's the fire in my little girl's eyes."

These days, Isbell is regarded as one of the most polished storytellers going. For his lyrical prowess, he's been compared to such luminaries as Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan. (He has a line from Dylan's song "Boots of Spanish Leather" tattooed on his forearm: "Just carry yourself back to me unspoiled from across that lonesome ocean.")

In an interview conducted by the novelist George Saunders for GQ Style, posted on gq.com, Isbell compares his writing process to that of Cohen.

"He spent a lot of time on each individual line, and I do, too, trying to find a way that's more comfortable, from a performance aspect," Isbell says.

And Saunders offers high praise: "Something that strikes me about your songs is they're very natural. They're almost sort of slightly heightened conversation."

See for yourself Wednesday night at the Santander Performing Arts Center. For added incentive, a songwriter Isbell cites as one of his inspirations, James McMurtry, will open. A limited number of seats remain.